


the city of lights

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen, VIOLENT BUT NOT GRAPHICALLY VIOLENT, modern!AU, origin fic in a way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>November 2005. Paris is burning, and Combeferre finds Enjolras at the heart of the flames.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the city of lights

For Paris to be beautiful, it must be brightly lit.

For it to be Paris, those lights must on occasion be the fires of revolution. 

In the years that he’d lived there, Combeferre couldn’t remember ever seeing the city so red. As soon as the sun went down, Paris went up in flames. 

He’d seen riots. He’d carried signs in protests, and marched across the Seine to the Place de la Sorbonne to take a stand against injustice. He’d been in rallies, and he’d even given a speech against a capitalist candidate in a local election. 

But never in his recollection had he ever come across violence on such a massive scale. 

He could taste the gasoline in the air when he left his apartment building in the morning. Plumes of smoke curled over the rooftops, lingering well into mid-day. They only faded into the bright, blue sky when the wind picked up -- and when it didn’t, they covered the city like an ominous fog. At night, from the comfort and safety of his window, he could watch the madness start all over again while distant streets burned. 

Naively, he had expected the people to simmer down a few days after the first riot. He understood why they were angry. He sympathised. Rampant, unchecked racism and police brutality had evolved from a social crisis to a physical hell, but the destruction and chaos that resulted -- whole avenues of cars unjustifiably torched, and hundreds of potentially innocent people dragged into prison -- made him queasy. 

He didn’t like violence.

He didn’t like sudden, extreme upheaval. 

But more than that, he hated that thousands of people in his own country felt so powerless that fire and fury had become their only hope. 

It was that fury that actually scared him.

It was passionate, but it was scathingly rational -- and he was too familiar with that. He knew what that could lead to. The people were outraged with the police, and rightfully so. But the police -- enraged by the destruction, and the physical assaults by rioters -- fought back. In his mind, it was only a matter of time before the conflict became lethal. 

In a cruelly ironic twist of fate, it was the threat of imminent fatalities that had him out of the Polytechnic and on the streets that night. He was looking for Enjolras. 

Combeferre checked his phone again. He’d gotten one message -- one stupid, reckless demand to come out and join the revolution in Clichy-sous-Bois -- an hour ago. 

But what a revolution, he had thought as he hurried through the dark. Did it actually count if only the poorest suburbs burned? Rioters turned the city upside down in their frenzy -- torching cars, smashing street lamps, and tearing up cobblestones -- but would it really make a difference if any moment now, someone struck too hard? 

His heart was in his chest every time he saw a smashed window, but he forced himself to slow to a walk and straighten up as a squad of police in riot gear rounded the corner. It wasn’t illegal to be out at night (yet), but he couldn’t risk getting dragged in for questioning. 

[text] Combeferre: Where are you??

A gang of angry teenagers sprinted out in front of the police. They shouted obscenities (which the police in turn yelled right back) and chucked heavy rocks that slid off the officers’ raised riot shields. As the police took off after them -- the whole group running wildly in the direction of Clichy -- Combeferre felt a simultaneous sense of guilt and relief that he hadn’t seen any blond curls among those kids. 

But he followed them -- he had no doubt that he would find Enjolras at the heart of the crisis.

Wherever the avenues were broken, and the fighting was hottest -- that’s where Enjolras would be. He was inundated with the rage and fire of every rebellion going back to 1798. The failure of the people to produce the ideal government after a period of crisis seemed to have collected inside him like a bottomless well of dissatisfaction, culminating in the creation of an enraged, and occasionally terrible youth. At sixteen, Enjolras knew that it was his calling in life to be angry on behalf of any person who was too scared to feel that fury for themselves. 

Combeferre stopped twice to help people to their feet. If they were a policeman or protester, he didn’t notice, and he certainly didn’t care. His eyes jumped from one explosion to the next, searching the haze for the one face that had led him to abandon his books in the first place. He was in the thick of it now -- where the police fought back against molotov cocktails with truncheons and tear gas grenades. 

To his left, a police car went up in flames, and -- true to form -- soot-streaked blond hair on the other side of it caught Combeferre’s attention as the smoke cleared. Enjolras was grinning with a reckless, child-like glee. Combeferre let go of the deep breath he didn’t even realise he’d been holding. 

“Enjolras!”

Enjolras turned, narrowing his eyes against the blaze. He’d thought he’d heard his name. 

In the same moment, a policeman slammed into him, grabbing him by the arm. 

Combeferre lunged forward. “Wait-- stop!” 

Somehow the excitement never left Enjolras’s face. He struggled -- he kicked the policeman in the shins and tried to yank his arm back -- but the defiant glow in his eyes stayed just as enthusiastic as it had been while he watched the squad car burn. 

Combeferre grabbed the sleeve of Enjolras’s shirt, and shouted over the din to the policeman he was fighting with: “Stop! Please, stop-- he’s just a kid.”

Enjolras looked up sharply. He was no younger than any of the other youth on the street, and he certainly wasn’t going to let that stand in the way of what he was trying to accomplish. “I’m not!” he hissed -- but his eyes darkened with a poignantly teenage glower. 

The policeman grunted -- he clearly didn’t care -- and pulled Enjolras back in the direction of an improvised barricade that the police were using as a defensive wall. 

Combeferre didn’t relent. “Please,” he repeated, keeping his voice steady. “He is--” He shoved his hand in Enjolras’s pocket and pulled out his student ID card. “He just turned sixteen-- I’ll take him straight home, I promise. Just let him go.” 

It wasn’t likely that Enjolras’s age had anything to do with the policeman loosening his hold, and Combeferre knew it. There were a dozen, far younger -- and far more frightened -- looking victims being manhandled by the police and pushed into the back of a single requisitioned vehicle at the end of the street. But Combeferre refused to acknowledge the title of the elite boarding school printed at the top of Enjolras’s card -- Enjolras was livid enough as it was. 

“Are you his brother?” The policeman asked. Enjolras was leaning away from Combeferre. 

“Yes,” Combeferre answered immediately, and silently prayed that the policeman wouldn’t ask for his own identification. At nineteen, he was twice as culpable, and ten times as likely to get dragged into prison himself. “I”m a student at the Polytechnic,” he pressed. “And we’re leaving. Now.” 

The policeman muttered something that should have been a formal warning, and let Enjolras go. 

Enjolras fought Combeferre almost as hard as he struggled against the policeman -- he didn’t shout, or hiss, but he shoved at Combeferre’s chest. Combeferre grabbed him with both hands and hauled him away. 

When the policeman turned around, Combeferre frantically whispered: “Are you trying to get arrested?”

“Yes!” Enjolras answered loudly. His eyes flashed with rage and resistance. “It exposes the incompetence of the system! The more people that they arrest--” Combeferre clapped his hand over Enjolras’s mouth as the policeman stopped and frowned at them.

Enjolras seethed. 

After a moment, Combeferre continued in a harsh whisper. It wasn’t easy to hold Enjolras back and look him in the eye at the same time, and it was taking its toll on his patience. “If these people don’t stop physically assaulting the police, the result is going to be completely senseless bloodshed, Enjolras! Not exposure! Is that the revolution you want?”

Enjolras raised his chin defiantly. “I’m not assaulting policemen,” he countered. “I’m assaulting police cars. They’ve arrested hundreds of people in the last two nights alone just for looking suspicious when they’ve done nothing! I am taking away their ability to do that.”

It was a logical response, if not safe one. The police would have significantly more difficulty bringing anyone in without transportation. That, Combeferre realised, explained the unmarked van behind the barricade. 

The noise around them seemed to double. Enjolras stepped back from Combeferre. 

“Enjolras!”

A new wave of riot officers -- fully-armed and significantly more menacing than the police officer they had been dealing with -- came into view in the smoke and fog at the end of the avenue. The crowd of protesters scattered in front of them, but the rocks kept flying. Cobblestones, trash and debris, bottles filled with gasoline -- whatever the people could find to use as weapons, they did, and the police responded by brutally striking down anyone in range with their heavy batons. 

Enjolras leapt in their direction as screams erupted from a nearby house. One of the offices had rolled a tear gas grenade past a broken door. 

Combeferre caught him around the waist and emphatically shoved him back again. The stragglers rushed past them. One older man had collapsed in the middle of the street. He clutched at his chest as he struggled to breathe. 

“Enjolras,” Combeferre insisted, pushing him after the fleeing rioters. “Run!”

Combeferre turned and dashed over to the fallen old man, grabbing his hand. He had to get back on his feet. There was no telling what would happen if he stayed there -- he might get arrested or he might get trampled. Combeferre wasn’t willing to stand back and wait for either eventuality. 

But the old man cried out when Combeferre tried to pull him up -- so Combeferre dropped to his knees. He was oblivious to the chaos around him. He was reading a mix of biochemistry and engineering at university -- he had the knowledge to help, and he knew he was obligated to use it. 

He found a fractured rib almost immediately. 

Seconds later, two very rough hands yanked him backwards. 

Two turned into six as the squadron of riot officers surrounded him. 

Combeferre’s only consolation as two officers in dark uniforms utterly unsympathetically dragged the injured man off the ground was that Enjolras seemed to have vanished. 

“He needs help!” Combeferre shouted at them. He wasn’t struggling -- he was trying to make himself heard over the noise of sirens and car alarms and screaming. The officers swore at him and told him to shut up. Combeferre didn’t. He couldn’t. “Please, he needs medical assistance now! He--” Something very hard hit him in the stomach and he doubled over. 

The blow had knocked the air out of his chest. If two officers hadn’t been holding him by both arms, he’d have collapsed. But even as he struggled to stay on his feet, he raggedly continued to plead with them, coughing out the words: “Take him to the hospital. He needs to see a doctor.”

A police baton caught him across the jaw. Fireworks exploded behind his eyes. He fell silent.

In the absence of his protestations, the riot officers dragged him, the old man, and the eight other terrified-looking people they’d arrested to a scratched and dented police van, and unceremoniously shoved them all inside. 

Enjolras lividly watched the entire scene unfold from across the avenue.

His distance from the action was not voluntary. He had reached out to help, only to be suddenly dragged away by the collar of his shirt. He swore -- he struggled violently against the iron grip of the complete stranger towing him backwards, out of sight of the police. At one point he’d even elbowed his captor in the face in an effort to get back to Combeferre, but the man’s tenacity was astonishing. He didn’t even blink -- he just kept pulling. 

Enjolras snarled. The man gave him a sharp slap in the back of the head. “Stop.”

Unlike Combeferre, this man had no worry in his tone. In fact, as Enjolras twisted to get a better look at him -- he could have sworn that the man was grinning. 

Enjolras’s chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath, but he stopped belligerently resisting. 

“Fucking finally--” The stranger dug his fingers into Enjolras’s shoulder. 

Enjolras narrowed his eyes defiantly. Face to face with his captor, he could see that the man had a cut across his eyebrow (that he hadn’t seemed to notice, despite the blood dripping down his face), and a wide, wolfish smile. And from what Enjolras could tell in the dim light, he seemed to be no more than a year or so older than Combeferre. 

The man was completely unperturbed by the insolence in Enjolras’s expression. He actually admired it -- he had overheard the conversation between Enjolras and Combeferre earlier, and grinned enthusiastically at Enjolras’s commitment to social upheaval. From his point of view, this bright-eyed, blond-haired little kid couldn’t have been more than fourteen -- but here he was, out on the streets and ardently fighting. More than that -- he had seen Enjolras in action before his so-called brother had shown up, and he’d noticed that, as young as he was, Enjolras had a gift for inciting others to riot. 

He had witnessed Enjolras rip up the first cobblestone, and hurl it through the windshield of an empty squad car. 

The light of rebellion blazed in this kid’s eyes -- and the other fighter followed. 

The man gave Enjolras’s should a firm shake. “Look,” he demanded, pointing out at the burning avenue. “You’re here. You’re useful. And you’re fucking stupid if you think you’re going to do better rotting in a god damn cell.”

Enjolras’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t answer. He was riot drunk; it was a struggle to digest what the man -- this completely unknown stranger -- was saying to him. Still, his fierce expression didn’t falter, and the man chuckled. 

“Do you know how to make molotovs?” The man asked. 

**

Combeferre wiped his bloody hands on the legs of his trousers. “You’re going to be alright,” he told the crying woman in front of him. He was doing his best to be reassuring, despite his exhaustion. “It’s just a little scratch-- head wounds just seem to bleed a lot more than you’d expect.” He glanced at the boy holding a torn piece of cloth to her temple. “Hold it tight,” he instructed. 

The boy nodded. 

The woman kept crying -- but she wasn’t the only one. They were surrounded by terrified, anxious victims. 

Combeferre sat back on his heels and took a deep breath. 

The first thing he’d done when the police had shoved him into an overcrowded jail cell was to check on the old man they’d dragged in with him. He’d managed to get everyone out of corner so the man could lie down -- his rib was fractured, but as long as he stayed as still as possible until he could receive medical attention, he would live. Combeferre’s biggest fear had been that the old man might have punctured a lung, but after a thorough check, Combeferre had convinced himself (and a few of the younger kids watching him) that he hadn’t. 

According to his patient, Imran -- the wheezing probably had more to do with the cigarettes he smoked than the police hitting him. His wife was always pestering him to quit, but Imran insisted he was too old. 

Combeferre had smiled at him, and reassuringly touched his shoulder as he told him: “It’s never too late for change.”

Caring for Imran turned into caring for Abeni and Laurette. Abeni moved out of the way for Phillippe, who dragged him to Madame Coté. Laurette helped him with Karim, and Karim held the cloth to Madame Nabil’s head as she sobbed. 

He hadn’t really had time to even touch the swollen lump on his jaw. It didn’t matter. 

It was one thing to be out on the streets, surrounded by angry people with a purpose. It was something completely different to be locked in a small room with the injustice that had dragged rioters into the streets in the first place. Laurette wasn’t a revolutionary -- she was hurrying home from a piano lesson. 

Karim was twelve. He didn’t even know why people were fighting. 

Two men in the corner quietly prayed, because -- as Combeferre had seen on the news just that morning -- they were afraid that someone like the interior minister, Sarkozy, might take away their citizenship. And all because they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Only Phillippe was a genuine rioter. He had boasted and taunted the policemen, and in return, they’d left the plastic band that bound his wrists together in place because they considered him a threat. Combeferre had helped him to saw it off against one of the benches. 

He couldn’t help but notice that despite their fear, no one in that cold, tense room blamed Philippe for what was happening outside. 

Combeferre was behind bars for three days before the police finally released him. He was starving; he felt haggard. The student in him was vaguely concerned about the amount of work he’d missed, but more than anything, he was just very annoyed. 

Enjolras met him at the main doors to the station with a sandwich, a cup of coffee, and an uncharacteristically apologetic expression. (Enjolras wasn’t the type to regret anything, but in fairness -- the whole prison fiasco had been at least partially his fault.) But Combeferre shook his head with weary, dismissive affection before Enjolras could speak. 

“You look well,” Combeferre greeted. And it was true -- for reasons that were no doubt directly related to the ongoing riots -- Enjolras seemed flooded with a new, brighter sense of vitality. He reminded Combeferre vaguely of the Greek God, Apollo.

Enjolras said nothing in response about what Combeferre looked like -- for which Combeferre was grateful. Instead, he handed over the coffee he’d brought with him as they walked to a nearby park. Combeferre thanked him, but raised a quizzical eyebrow as he noticed the gauze bandages wrapped around Enjolras’s right hand. 

Enjolras almost cheerfully explained: “I was holding a bottle when a riot officer smashed it.”

He neglected to add that the bottle had been filled with gasoline -- that was a detail he could burden Combeferre with later. At least it hadn’t been on fire. 

“It’s fine,” he added. “It looked worse than it is. Bahorel says the scars will be impressive.”

Combeferre didn’t even blink. There was not a molecule in his body at that point even remotely capable of being surprised. “Bahorel?” He asked, choosing to gloss over the thought of scars being ‘impressive’. 

Enjolras smiled. “A new friend. He’s studying law.”

“And rioting.”

“And rioting,” Enjolras conceded -- but there was no contrition in the way he said it. 

Combeferre didn’t want contrition. 

He draped an arm over Enjolras’s shoulder encouragingly, and took a deep, calming breath. 

He still didn’t like violence. But in the last three days, he’d realised he liked their society even less.


End file.
